At the end of April, my wife and I took a great Model S road trip from the SF bay area to Vegas and back. Since an all-electric road trip still takes a bit more planning than a road trip in a conventional car, I thought I would share my experiences to help others planning similar trips. I kept a log of driving time, charging time, mileage between superchargers, and rated mileage used on each segment of the trip. I also kept the cruise control set at 75 mph whenever possible.
Since driving to Vegas takes the better part of a day, I took two days off of work and we headed out on Thursday, April 25[SUP]th[/SUP]. We started out with most of a range charge (263 rated miles) which was more than enough to make it the 162 miles from our house in San Leandro to Harris ranch. A little detour in Livermore for some coffee put the actual distance at 167 miles and we arrived at Harris Ranch with a comfortable 50 rated miles on the gauge. The six new Harris Ranch superchargers are really easy to spot- they are in the corner of the main parking lot closest to the entrance (the original supercharger is across the road near the gas station). We had the place all to ourselves, but that shouldn’t be too surprising since it was 11:25 am on a weekday. There was a shovel and a wheel barrow on the ground so it looked like someone was still doing some work on the superchargers. But the superchargers themselves worked great- we added range at a very respectable 288 rated miles and hour once things had spooled up.
Harris ranch is kind of an interesting place. We noticed a small group of classic cars parked together in the parking lot as well as lots of cow-themed furniture inside.
When we headed back to the car, I noticed a two-man work crew wearing red Tesla T-shirts working on the superchargers and I chatted with the older of the two while the car was charging. He was a very friendly guy originally from Poland and I bet he’s talked to quite a few members of this forum. I kind of got the impression that those two guys might be the entire west coast supercharger installation team, but I’m not completely sure. He said they were really busy installing new supercharger locations and mentioned that they were installing chargers on the 101 so that people could go between LA and San Francisco on both the 101 and Interstate 5 in the very near future. He also mentioned that their goal was to have 100 supercharger locations online by the end of the year and he said the hard part was getting the permits and negotiating with the land owners rather than doing the actual installation. At this point, he had to get back to work so my wife and I headed off to Tejon ranch with 206 rated miles on the guage.
The superchargers at Tejon ranch are even easier to spot than the ones at Harris Ranch- you can see the giant solar canopy from the interstate as you approach from the North.
We arrived with 57 rated miles and once again we had the place to ourselves. I plugged the car in and we went off in search of In-N-Out for lunch since my wife had never been there before. Tejon ranch is pretty spread out and the superchargers are at the opposite end of the place as In-N-Out. You also have to cross three separate cross walks on fairly busy roads to get there on foot. If you have passengers in the car that aren’t wearing comfortable shoes you might want to drop them off before charging the car.
It took longer than anticipated to walk to and from In-N-Out so the car charged up to nearly a full standard charge of 241 miles in 59 minutes. When we got back to the car, I let the nav system figure out how to get us to the Barstow supercharger and it took us on route 138 east, then 14 north, then onto highway 58. Parts of route 138 were pretty desolate and slacker kept cutting out when the 3G connection got too weak. Because of charging longer than anticipated at Tejon, we made it to Barstow with 71 miles of range. The Barstow superchargers are much harder to find than the ones at Harris ranch or Tejon ranch. They are located behind the Chilis and we had all four charging bays to ourselves. There is an outlet mall across a flood control channel from the superchargers. At first I though we would have to do a bit of hiking to get there, but luckily the bridge that crossed the flood control channel also had a pedestrian walkway. Between a bit of paranoia about finding a place to charge that night in Vegas and my wife’s interest in the outlet mall, we charged the car all the way up to 258 rated miles before heading off.
The drive to Vegas was pretty uneventful and we made it to our hotel with a comfortable 81 rated miles left. We were staying at the Wynn and a quick scan around the self-park garage didn’t turn up any outlets within reach of a parking spot. I asked about charging the car there, but no one seemed to know anything about charging an electric car so after checking in and hauling all of our bags up to the room, we decided to try our luck at the very popular free J1772 chargers on the sixth floor of the Venetian self park garage. These are pretty easy to spot since the wall near the chargers is painted green. Since it was Thursday night, we were in luck and both spots were free. We got a full standard charge that night and a white Chevy volt was in the other spot when I went to move the car the next morning.
We usually fly to Vegas and having a car (especially a really nice car) is MUCH better than walking from one end of the strip to the other or hailing a cab. We drove all over the place on Friday.
My wife and I both like to play poker (although we like to keep the stakes low so as not to risk too much money) so we checked out several poker rooms until it was time for dinner. We went to craftsteak at the MGM grand and I couldn’t resist the Japanese A5 Wagyu beef I saw on the menu. I’ve been trying to have real Japanese Kobe beef for a long time and I figured I might as well order it since it was less expensive than airfare or gasoline would have been. I had the 8 oz New York strip and it was completely different than any steak I’d ever had before. It was delicious, but I’m glad it was only 8 oz because it was so rich that any more would have been too much.
After dinner, we went back to the Wynn to see La Reve since the tickets came as park of the room package. It was a very impressive show, although it didn’t quite top Cirque du Soleil KA that we had seen a few years earlier. After the show, we drove back to the Excaliber to spend some more time at their low stakes poker tables. We finally left at about 2:30 am and decided to go back to the Venetian to see if we could fill the battery back up enough to make it back to Barstow on Sunday without any more charging stops. There was a grey Model S in one of the spots, but luckily the other spot was free. The next morning I found out from the facebook model S group that a third Model S was in town and trying to charge so I let him know when I had moved the car so he could charge.
The next day we didn’t drive as much and spend most of our time within walking distance of the MGM (although we did stop off at the Gold and Silver Pawn shop where they film Pawn Stars and the parking lot attendant had never heard of Tesla and was blown away when I told him it was 100% electric and that I’d driven there from the San Francisco bay area).
Sunday morning it was time to head out and we left with 235 rated miles. After a brief stop in Primm, we rolled in to Barstow with 55 rated miles. This time there was already a car plugged into charging bay 2A. Since the Tesla supercharger installation guy had confirmed my understanding of how the superchargers are wired, I plugged into bay 1A and got a respectable 263 miles/hour of range. Shortly afterwards, two more Model S’s pulled up and took the last two spots.
My wife came out way ahead on Poker (alas I was only up a little) so we went to the coach store so she could spend some of her winnings. But this time, several buses of foreign tourists had just been dropped off at the outlet mall and the place was completely packed. By the time we made it back to the car, we had almost a complete range charge (259 miles). The three other cars were still charging and a white Model S was waiting. He grabbed the spot the instant we left.
This time the nav system took us through Victorville before taking us on an even more desolate route 18 before putting us back on 14 north and the still desolate 138 back to Tejon. The next time we do this trip, I might backtrack a bit and take 58 to Barstow to stay within cell phone range for more of the trip. But following the nav system, we made it to Tejon with a whopping 89 rated miles. This allowed us to head to Harris ranch with 180 miles of range after a brief 25 minute charge (it would have been even faster if Starbucks had been quicker).
We made it Harris ranch with 46 rated miles and had a nice steak dinner while the car charged. Harris ranch isn’t exactly fast food and the car had almost a complete range charge (259 miles) by the time we walked back to the car. We made it back home with a comfortable 60 rated miles of range.
Overall it was a very fun trip and proved yet again that the 85 kWh Model S and supercharging makes for a great road trip experience. Although now that I know how much range is required to make it between supercharger stops at 75 mph, I won’t have to be quite as conservative and can reduce the charging time a bit. But between the meals and the mall we spent very little time doing nothing but waiting for the car to charge.
Here are the overall stats (aka TL;DR):
Total distance: 1237 miles
San Leandro to Vegas: 11 hours 47 minutes total; 8 hours 53 minutes driving and 2 hours 54 minutes charging
Vegas to San Leandro: 12 hours 17 minutes total; 9 hours 11 minutes driving and 3 hours 6 minutes charging
San Leandro to Harris Ranch: 167 actual miles, used 213 rated miles
Harris Ranch to Tejon Ranch: 117 actual miles, used 149 rated miles
Tejon Ranch to Barstow: 151 actual miles, used 170 rated miles
Barstow to Vegas: 158 actual miles, used 177 rated miles
Vegas to Barstow: 162 actual miles, used 180 rated miles
Barstow to Tejon: 154 actual miles, used 170 rated miles
Tejon to Harris: 116 actual miles, used 134 rated miles
Harris to San Leandro: 162 actual miles, used 199 rated
Harris Ranch: max charge rate of 288 mi/hr
Tejon Ranch: max charge rate of 289 mi/hr
Barstow: max charge rate of 273 mi/hr
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Great write up and pictures, now I'm starving!
2 months and 5 days til my Vegas trip, though it should be much easier from San Diego (300 miles away).
I hope you have as much fun going to Vegas as we had. And if you're wondering why it looks like you are replying to a post before it was posted, I tried to replace one of the images and it screwed things up enough that I deleted the post and then posted it again.
80 mile trip to work each day, wow (oucH)
